Intevac Sends Letter to Stockholders

Intevac, Inc. (NASDAQ: IVAC) today announced that it has mailed a letter
to stockholders in connection with the Company’s 2014 Annual Meeting of
Stockholders, to be held on May 14, 2014.

The full text of the letter follows:

April 21, 2014

Dear Fellow Intevac Stockholder:

At Intevac’s 2014 Annual Meeting of Stockholders, you will be asked to
make an important decision regarding your company’s future. We urge you
to protect the value of your investment in Intevac by voting the
enclosed WHITE proxy card today FOR Intevac’s eight highly
qualified and experienced director nominees: Norman H. Pond, Wendell
T. Blonigan, Matthew A. Drapkin, David S. Dury, Stanley J. Hill, Thomas
M. Rohrs, John F. Schaefer and Ping Yang.

Voce Catalyst Partners LP (“VCP”), which is affiliated with Voce Capital
LLC and Voce Capital Management LLC (together with VCP, “Voce Capital”),
an activist hedge fund founded in 2009 and with approximately $2.4
million in total funds under management,1 has disclosed an
ownership of about half of a percent (~0.5%) of Intevac’s outstanding
common stock. Voce is trying to oust three experienced and integral
members of your Board and replace them with nominees of their own, all
of which, on paper, appear to be unqualified to represent your interests
and serve on Intevac’s Board. Based on publicly available information,
each of them has no relevant experience, and no apparent skills that
could add value to the current composition of the Board.

From our interactions with Voce, particularly with Mr. Plants, we
believe they are pursuing a short sighted and ill-conceived agenda to
the detriment of all Intevac stockholders. That agenda, which we believe
would destroy value, is a quick break-up of the company and a
liquidation of its businesses and balance sheet. That being said, as
discussed further below, we offered to interview Mr. Lash and Mr. Giles
with an open mind to see if these individuals could add to the skills
and experience represented on our Board. We are always open to
strengthening the stewardship of your Company, however, each and every
time we offered to interview these individuals, we encountered untenable
roadblocks from Voce Capital.

Your Board unanimously recommends that stockholders vote “FOR” all
eight of Intevac’s director nominees today by telephone, online, or by
signing and dating the enclosed WHITE proxy card and returning it in the
postage-paid envelope provided. Please vote all WHITE proxy cards
that you receive.Your vote is important no matter how many or
how few shares you own. We urge stockholders to discard any GOLD
proxy cards and other materials you may receive from Voce Capital.

Voce Capital is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and is advocating a highly
risky fire sale of Intevac’s Photonics business and a value-destroying
exit of Intevac’s entire solar equipment business. This “roll the dice”
strategy is inappropriate unsupported by any facts and simply makes no
sense given our current momentum. Perhaps if Voce Capital had taken the
time to learn a bit more about our business, they would have realized
the inherent flaws in their approach. Unfortunately, that does not
appear to be the case. In particular, the plan Voce Capital is
advocating would effectively lock in losses, surrender the future upside
of stockholders’ investment and ignores the tangible progress Intevac
has made.

A sale of our Photonics business at this time is NOT in
stockholders’ best interests. We are building a successful
Photonics business and our progress speaks for itself. We recently
received our largest single Photonics contract award, worth $27
million, to supply digital night vision cameras for the U.S. Army’s
Apache helicopters, as a prime contractor. As a result, our business
profitability is increasing, we have a multi-year program opportunity
pipeline of $350 million, and we are well positioned to grow Photonics
revenue by approximately 25% in 2014 alone – trends we expect to
continue over the next three to five years. Given this positive
momentum, it makes no sense to sell our Photonics business at this
time. To do so would deprive the Company’s stockholders from realizing
a full return on their investments.

An immediate exit of our solar equipment business is NOT a viable
strategy. We have adjusted our investment in solar technology and
are enhancing our product strategy for our core sputter equipment to
address other thin film deposition applications and markets. This
improved strategy reflects the current and future opportunities in
solar equipment and will allow Intevac to expand the markets we serve
within the cost structure we have in place today. Exiting this
business as demanded by Voce Capital would erase the progress we have
made in our equipment growth strategy and eliminate the option value
in the business.

There are numerous “red flags” around the Voce Capital nominees. At
Intevac, we expect Board members to contribute meaningfully to the
Company and its strategic direction. Although Voce Capital has refused
to allow Intevac to interview any of its nominees, we have reviewed the
credentials of their nominees based on publicly available information.
Your Board has a number of concerns regarding their qualifications to
serve on your Board. We believe stockholders should question how the
addition of Voce Capital’s nominees to your Board would improve the
value of your investment in Intevac.

J. Daniel Plants has no relevant experience – in our core
industry, our growth areas, or even as a public company board member.
He is advocating ill-conceived suggestions that the Intevac Board
believes would damage the Company and impair stockholder value. We
question how someone with no experience working in a corporation can
make thoughtful operational proposals. In fact, he apparently has no
experience beyond targeting companies for his hedge fund and sending
letters, which are simply designed to further publicize himself and
his fund. In addition, Plants has a questionable professional history,
including sporadic employment terms – two of which culminated with his
initiation of litigation. All-in-all, we respectfully believe your
Company deserves better.

Joseph V. Lash, a corporate advisor and investor, also has no
experience in any of the industries in which Intevac operates or any
other pertinent industries. Mr. Lash’s primary background is in
mergers and acquisitions advisory work. We know little else about Mr.
Lash as we were refused an opportunity to interview him despite our
genuine requests.

Marc T. Giles is a former CEO of company that supplied software
and hardware to the apparel industry. Other than serving on two other
boards, we are unable to determine if and where he has been employed
since he sold Gerber Scientific a year and a half ago. As with Mr.
Lash, we know little else about Mr. Giles – other than that he has no
relevant industry experience – as we were similarly refused an
opportunity to interview him despite our genuine requests.

Why risk electing nominees with no relevant experience to guide
Intevac, which already has an actively engaged experienced Board with
the requisite skill set to continue to effectively guide this company
forward? Our Board has been a driver of significant change, and we
believe that adding Voce Capital’s nominees will undermine good
governance and cripple the effectiveness of the Board.

INTEVAC’S HIGHLY QUALIFIED AND EXPERIENCED BOARD OF DIRECTORS ISCOMMITTED
TO WORKING TOWARD ADVANCING THE INTERESTS OF ALL STOCKHOLDERS

Your Board is comprised of eight active and engaged directors. Each of
your directors brings unique expertise, experience and skill sets to the
Intevac Board. This diversity is vital to supporting Intevac’s continued
growth and success in several business lines with international
footprints. The variety of experiences represented on the Board includes
public company leaders in the high technology equipment industry and
senior executives with specific experience in each of Intevac’s core
businesses: thin film deposition, digital night vision and complex
manufacturing equipment for coating and processing surfaces.

Board refreshment is an area of focus for your Board. We offered to
include Voce Capital’s nominees in our interview process, as we are
always seeking qualified and experienced directors given our diverse and
complex businesses. Our offers were repeatedly rejected out of hand
unless we agreed in advance that Voce Capital’s nominees would be part
of Intevac’s slate of directors. Such a commitment before even meeting
these individuals would have been totally inappropriate and inconsistent
with our obligation to do what we believe is best for Intevac and all of
its stockholders. Therefore, the conversations consistently broke down
and no progress was made toward avoiding this proxy contest – which we
made every effort to do.

Voce’s categorical refusal to allow us to interview their nominees
without agreeing to put them on our slate of directors is not only
perplexing from a business perspective, but also raises serious
questions about what is motivating their lack of transparency. These
unreasonable demands have left Intevac with no alternative but to defend
itself against Voce’s unnecessary battle, diverting precious resources,
management time, and money away from creating value for our stockholders.

We have expanded and strengthened the Intevac Board, and today, your
Board is comprised of eight directors, six of whom are independent. Two
directors have been added to the Board in just the past year, for a
total of four new directors in the past four years.

Most recently, in December 2013, we added Matthew Drapkin to our Board.
Mr. Drapkin is a founding partner of Becker Drapkin Management L.P., an
investment firm focused on the small cap market. Becker Drapkin owns
approximately 4.5% of Intevac’s outstanding common stock and is one of
Intevac’s largest stockholders. We are firm believers in stockholder
representation on boards, and are thankful to Mr. Drapkin for agreeing
to serve on our Board. He brings to the Board important experience in
capital allocation practices, balance sheet optimization and corporate
strategy, all with a focus on generating stockholder value. In addition,
Mr. Drapkin has experience contributing to numerous boards of directors
where he is a significant stockholder and providing those boards with
value insights on how strategic actions would be perceived by
stockholders.

As part of our ongoing Board refreshment process, we are committed to
appointing two new qualified directors to your Board within the next 12
months. We are focused on identifying individuals who can help grow the
business and who can bring additional military procurement, defense
industry or data storage industry expertise to the Board. Intevac firmly
believes that the continued service of its current Board and management
team is in the best interests of all stockholders. Our directors are
focused on the consistent enhancement of stockholder value. We encourage
all stockholders to use the WHITE proxy card to vote FOR
Intevac’s director nominees.

INTEVAC HAS THE RIGHT STRATEGIES AND THE RIGHT TEAMTO
DRIVE STOCKHOLDER VALUE

Intevac has the right strategies and right team in place to drive growth
in our existing markets and to apply our core technical capabilities in
attractive new markets. We are confident that our strategies have
traction and that we are positioned to realize significant value for
stockholders:

Continuing our leadership in the hard drive media market;

Growing our Photonics business;

Refining our equipment growth strategy;

Maintaining a strong financial foundation; and

Returning capital to our stockholders.

Intevac’s management team has the right vision for a successful future,
and is pursuing the right opportunities for growth. In July 2013, our
management team was strengthened through the addition of Wendell
Blonigan as President and Chief Executive Officer. He brings over 25
years of executive management experience and extensive technology
expertise that spans the solar, flat panel display and semiconductor
capital equipment markets. Under Mr. Blonigan’s direction, and supported
by an engaged and knowledgeable Board, Intevac is solidly positioned to
continue delivering results and creating value for all stockholders.

PROTECT THE VALUE OF YOUR INVESTMENT IN INTEVACVOTE THE WHITE
PROXY CARD TODAY

We are confident that we have the right Board, the right management
team and the right strategies to continue to drive value for all
stockholders. We strongly urge you to protect the value of your
investment in Intevac by voting “FOR” your Board’s experienced
and highly qualified director nominees on the WHITE proxy card
today.

Your vote is extremely important, no matter how many or how few shares
you own. We urge you to vote today by telephone, online, or by signing
and dating the enclosed WHITE proxy card and returning it in the
postage-paid envelope provided. Please do not return or otherwise vote
any GOLD proxy card sent to you by Voce Capital.

On behalf of your Board, we thank you for your continued support of
Intevac.

Sincerely,

Norman H. Pond

Wendell T. Blonigan

Founder and Chairman of the Board

President and Chief Executive Officer

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

Certain statements contained in this letter may constitute “forward
looking statements,” including statements regarding Intevac’s strategy,
momentum, pipeline, growth in its businesses, business trends and
opportunities, board development and capital management initiatives.
Stockholders should be aware that these forward looking statements are
subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond
our control, which could cause actual results to differ materially from
such statements. Certain risks and uncertainties are disclosed from time
to time in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to update or
revise any forward looking statements.

ABOUT INTEVAC

Intevac was founded in 1991 and has two businesses: Equipment and
Intevac Photonics. In our Equipment business, we are a leader in the
design, development and manufacturing of high-productivity process
equipment solutions. Our systems are production-proven for high-volume
manufacturing of substrates with precise thin film properties, such as
those required in the hard drive and solar cell markets we currently
serve.

In our Photonics business, we are a leader in the development and
manufacture of leading-edge, high-sensitivity imaging products and
vision systems. Our products primarily address the defense markets. For
more information call 408-986-9888, or visit the company's website at www.intevac.com.

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

Certain statements contained in this letter may constitute “forward
looking statements,” including statements regarding trends in the hard
drive media market, growth of Intevac’s Photonics business, refinements
to Intevac’s equipment strategy and capital management initiatives.
Stockholders should be aware that these forward looking statements are
subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond
our control, which could cause actual results to differ materially from
such statements. Certain risks and uncertainties are disclosed from time
to time in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to update or
revise any forward looking statements.

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